Once Upon a Time before Google?

"Grandad what did you do before you had Google?" This question got me thinking, "Well let me see, son, it goes like this": When I was a lad, Google had not been invented. We had a computer, it took up a room the size of a basketball court and the head of IBM thought there was a market for about 5 of them in the US. When I did my undergraduate work we were still using slide-rules. All our assignments were hand written and it took hours of shuffling through thousands of library index cards to find information. Even then you had to wait weeks and sometimes months to get the information delivered to you. I'm sure it was all good training but I much prefer using the Internet to find information. Sure there is junk on the net, but there is junk in the library and bookshops as well. I would do at least 10 searches a day on Google to find things out. I don't need my dictionary or encyclopedia any more as it is so easy to access information. So stand aside young un, Grandad has to look something up on Google. DK First Published on Qassia

Fathers Day - another Book

Isn't Fathers Day great. I got a book called, Our Favourite Poems, New Zealanders choose their best-loved poems. The book contains 100 of New Zealand's favourite poems, chosen from all over the world and voted for in a nationwide poll. As the blurb says,

These are poems that New Zealanders genuinely treasure, both high-brow and popular, traditional and contemporary, and while this anthology is firmly rooted in NZ, it retains a strong international flavour.

I will share one stanza from my favourite NZ Poem by James.K. Baxter:

POEM IN THE MATUKITUKI VALLEY

Some few yards from the hut the standing beeches
Let fall their dead limbs,overgrown
With feathered moss and filigree of bracken.
The rotted wood splits clean and hard
Close-grained to the driven axe, with sound of water
Sibilant falling and high nested birds.

All you fathers out there have a great day.

Ciao

DK

A Trip to the Book Shop

This morning I woke up early and headed off to the bookshop. I was keen to purchase a copy of the biography of Professor J Beaglehole, the late eminent New Zealand historian, written by his son, Tim Beaglehole, another eminent historian. Luckily for me the bookshop (Wadsworths in New Plymouth - thank you Julie) had it as I was having trouble tracking it down!! And I got it $7 cheaper than it was selling for online at Fishpond. I am not meant to be visiting bookshops at the moment but I just can't help it. I have told my wife and she didn't explode at me, as happens sometimes. Happy reading one and all. DK

Adsense Works on Blogger

I was pleasantly surprised when I logged into my Adsense account that I have been making money by putting/activating Adsense on my site here. Well done Google. I'm working hard this weekend to build up my web exposure by a variety of means. I will of course still be getting in some book buying and reading!! Have a great weekend DK

Where does the Time Go

I can't believe that I have not posted to this blog since April. I really have been slack. Now I remember - I had an accident and was off work for 6 weeks, then I went to Greece for a months holiday, then I went to the UK for work and then I came home... That might account for it. At the moment I am encouraging people to read books. the book itself, not a book or article about the book. There is no substitute for reading primary sources, unmediated by other peoples opinions, learned or not!! I like to get the pure visceral response from reading a book without any learned intervention. This just seems to be purer. Keep well and hopefully I will post more often DR Kelp

Social Networking for Beginners

Social networking is one of the new wave, so called Web 2.0 technologies. Basically the idea of social networking is to make friends who share the same interests as you do. I belong to a number of such sites but my favorite site is Yuwie. Why? because you get paid for using it unlike the other sites such as Bebo (which is also an awesome site). On Yuwie you make money by visiting friends profiles, by posting comments, photos and videos plus a host of other activities. I have friends all over the world who share similar interests and while we interact we are getting paid. It's not a lot of money unless you are very committed to building downlines, but if you are going to spend hours on the Net networking why not get some benefit. I also reuse my Qassia intels there on my blog attributed of course with first published on Qassia then my Qassia link. If you have a lot of friends this may be the place for you. External Links Join Dr Kelp at Yuwie Now | http://www.bebo.com/drkelp

The Primary Source in History

The use of primary sources is critical to an understanding of history.

So what is a primary source? A primary source can be defined as: a document, speech, or other sort of evidence written, created or otherwise produced during the time under study. Primary sources offer an inside view of a particular event. (Definition accessed at http://www.library.unr.edu/instruction/help/primary.html)

So the definition of a primary source is wider than just a document or textual evidence. It can include music, folksongs, novels, paintings, sculptures, clothing and a host of other things. Today in our electronic age we have blogs, videos, social networking sites and YouTube clips that will be used by future generations of historians as primary sources to see how we lived. No doubt in hundreds of years time, people will watch clips of the 9/11 tragedy and gain an insight into our age and particular concerns. To really get to grips with history it is important to engage with a range of primary sources. It is too easy to look at books about primary sources (called secondary sources because they are at one remove from primary sources) or read what the experts see and miss the crucial evidence of handling the primary source materials ourselves. Read the Declaration of Independence instead of reading what Prof X says about it.

However, primary sources differ in relevance and there are some questions we need to ask ourselves when evaluating primary sources. What questions should we ask about Primary Sources? Lets take as an example the Civil War in the US.

1. How close to the time is the source? Generally the closer to the time of the action, the more valuable the source (documents/letters etc from the time period covered by the Civil War would be the most useful. Those written 10, 30 or 50 years later would have a decreasing relevance.

2. Who created the source? What was their position in society, Lord, General, maid, slave? Different people bring different perspectives on events.

3. Did the person have a view on the action? Are they biased in their view. Were they a Confederate or Union supporter, slave owner or abolitionist, neutral or partisan? You have to weigh up how honest and unbiased a source is before putting heavy reliance on it. In truth though, no human source can be completely unbiased, but some are more unbiased than others.

4. What does the source reveal between the lines? Sometimes in history we have to scan a document for examples of what is not there. You would expect a victorious General in a battle to say how wonderful everything was, but the losing General may well leave out pertinent material that would attribute blame to his actions. History is all around us and increasing in volume with every second. Handle the primary sources. Try to get a selection of sources from different stratas of society, gender and rank positions, from people with different levels of education and from different sides of a conflict or action. Weigh their respective validities and make your own conclusions. Learn to love learning, evaluating history is something we do every day without thinking about it. Keep the points above in mind and history will come alive.

First published on Qassia http://drkelp.qassia.com